Mark Twain

I was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, on the bank of the Mississippi, where a boy may learn everything worth knowing except how to sit still. I have been a printer, a river pilot, a silver miner of no account and a newspaperman of slightly more, and I have found that each trade prepares a man perfectly for the next one, provided the next one is writing about the last.

In 1867 a San Francisco paper paid my passage on the Quaker City, a steamer full of pilgrims bound for Europe and the Holy Land, on the understanding that I would send home letters. I sent fifty-three. Some of the pilgrims have not forgiven me, and I count that among the trip's successes.

This blog is those letters, put in order, with the maps and the bills they always lacked. I write down what I saw rather than what the guidebook said I ought to have seen. Where the two agree, I say so, though it is rare.